Fired
by idioticonion
Summary: Marshall is confused and concerned, and there's no-one he can talk to. Written around 5.14 The Perfect Week, but very definitely AU. Angst, dark themes and violent situations. Four parts.
1. Chapter 1

Marshall's fingers wrap around the metal cord and yank, sending the shutters tumbling down across the window. Blinking in the gloom, he sits heavily on a conference chair and bows his head down, resting his cheek against the cool wooden table.

There are words trapped inside him, suspicions and secrets. And as much as Marshall wants to let it out, to talk it through, come to terms with this roiling emotion because he knows there's no one he can turn to. Lily won't understand. She shows no interest in this corporate world, or the minutia of detail surrounding it. His wife still sees everything in stark colours, in black and white, blocking out all the grey. Lily would focus on the obvious, and thunder into her own assumptions.

This problem needs a delicate touch. Marshall lifts his head and inspects his own large hands, with long fingers that are great for writing reports, or playing ball, but not used to holding daggers or guns.

There's no one at work he can talk to either. Jenkins hasn't spoken to him since his wife took her fist to her face. None of the others care about what happens at the top. Everything's so hierarchical, wrapped up in neat little boxes.

Marshall smiles at the irony of this, at how he, too, would be blissfully unaware if he wasn't best friends with a senior VP. How he'd happily go about his job in ignorance.

This tension, this worry, it's way above his pay grade.

And if this problem was anything else, anything else at all in the company, there would be one guy he could lean on, question, and go to for advice. Even if the only response he got back was a half chuckle and the single word: "Please!"

Trouble is, this time, the only person he definitely can't ask about this is Barney. Because Barney is the problem.

*--*--*

_Earlier... _

He hasn't seen Barney for days, which isn't unusual in itself. Since Christmas, Barney's been noticeably absent, both from work and from the bar. Not that some of the guys in Special Projects don't do a lot of travelling. It's just that Barney had never been into it, unless there was a girl he was chasing, and since he'd gotten the hots for Robin, and after Barney and Robin had become an item, Barney pretty-much always stayed at home.

Marshall guesses that their break up, so low key in so many ways, is what pushed Barney away from Manhattan; away from his pain, maybe. It's hard to tell, when both parties insist, so vehemently, that everything is "fine".

But GNB is a darker place without the sunshine smile of his friend, and Marshall misses Barney always being around, encouraging him to goof off and offering weird insights into the power and politics behind the company. So when Marshall catches sight of his blonde friend, alone in the conference room one lunchtime, he slips inside, grinning and slapping him on the back. "Good to see you, Bro," Marshall says, and sinks down into a seat next to Barney, placing his brown paper sandwich bag down on the table between them.

Barney doesn't look up at him, but unscrews the top off a bottle of water. There's a stumbling second where Marshall's brain registers a wrongness, and processes it, but unfortunately his mouth is way ahead. He blurts, "Not got any lunch, dude?", before his logical faculties can catch up.

The wrongness is in the details. Marshall's good with the details.

And yet he presses on. "You want a sandwich? I think Lily did smoked salmon and cream cheese, with a little dill sauce that's just, Mmm! It's no problem if you want some. I can get some chips later from the vending machine."

Barney declines, with a shake of his head, and slides a finger fitfully under his shirt collar. He takes the tiniest of sips from the water bottle he's holding, and grimaces. The pained expression stays on his face as he swallows, his Adam's apple bobbing briefly.

The devil is in the detail. Marshall's always been good with the details.

Under a certain light, and with a certain mindset, you'd almost miss it. You could put the dark marks around Barney's throat down to a trick of the light, a shadow cast by his shirt, his suit jacket. You could blink and swear that the purple decorating the skin, was just smudge of lipstick, from where the notorious womaniser has, no doubt, been up to something nefarious in a stationary cupboard with some giggling secretary.

You could ignore the soft rainbow, bruised yellow to burned-oak, that circles Barney's neck . You might gloss over the way Barney's jaw works, the flint-hard expression, like he's clinging on to something by the tips of his fingers. Like it's taking every ounce of willpower just to sit still.

Marshall doesn't ignore it. "Oh my god!" He exclaims. "What happened to your neck?" Barney looks like he's been throttled, and Marshall expects some quirky comeback, some boast about a sex game that went wrong.

But his friend just shrugs, although the tension sheets off him like water off a sea-bird.

"I wasn't quick enough," is what Barney eventually says. But the words are soft, and croaking, and they crack like sheet ice under your feet in the dead of winter.


	2. Chapter 2

**Part 2**

It gets worse over the next few days. Barney gets ragged. His usual polished appearance degrades. There's a shadow across his jaw, and beneath his bloodshot eyes. He gets drunk every night and clumsily hits on anything that moves. There's an air of desperation about him that seems strained.

Marshall's always secretly admired Barney's _carpe diem_ philosophy. But this is different. This is a man on the edge of a breakdown.

Ted gently ribs Barney about it, saying that he's still cut up about Robin, and even she joins in. But there's an air of desperation about Robin too, in her need to convince everyone she's still attractive, and also with her weird jealousy about other women in the bar. But maybe that's normal? It seems normal. After a breakup, isn't it's perfectly usual for someone to take a pretty big hit to their self esteem?

What's happening to Barney isn't usual.

None of the others notice the bruises, but Marshall spots the ring of something, cream coloured, discolouring the collar of his friend's shirt. Makeup, to stave off any more awkward questions.

*--*--*

In bed at night, with his arms wrapped tight around his wife, his nose buried in the chocolate-warmth of her hair, Marshall lies awake, worrying. Sometimes he and Lily skirt the surface and they almost get there, Marshall almost opens up.

This is serious business, he almost says. Barney's neck - was he hung? Strangled? Marshall spends a lot of time in denial, because it seems like he must have imagined the bruising. It doesn't feel like real life. In real life, you don't walk around with this sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach, worrying that your friend my be in danger. That sort of thing only happens in movies, like something out of the _Bourne_ films. Or on that show, _24_. This is out of his league.

He's just a lawyer.

He shifts on to his back and Lily turns with him, because in bed, there is never an inch of air between them. A questing hand or foot is always extended, then the body pulls in and they are one again. Marshall doesn't resent the soft touch of Lily's hand, draped over his hip, but it feels weird, holding something this big inside him without being able to confide in her. It's not like him, he's not like this. He doesn't know how to deal.

He guesses that he's so worried because this is not an irrational fear. This is not a fear of dark places, or a phobia of cockroaches or mice. The bed dips beneath the weight of his worry and he feels the pressure push down on his chest the whole night through.

*--*--*

Lily picks up that something is wrong, because Lily always does. It isn't from Marshall but from Barney himself, because it's plain, Marshall thinks, it's almost screaming out. Barney's clearly bothered about something, but his wife wilfully misinterprets because she wants to put Barney into a box labelled "happy" so that he can somehow move on with his life; become a "real boy". Sometimes Marshall thinks that pretty condescending of Lily, but then he feels guilty. He knows that she means well.

She just doesn't see how scared their friend is.

In the occasional unguarded moment, Marshall wonders if it's not that Barney is scared as such, but more like he's terrified.

The devil is in those details.

*--*--*

And it's weird how in retrospect you often remember, when the big moments happen, what you were doing on the day before your life changes.

That morning, Marshall picks up a bagel on the way to the office and talks to Richardson (aka _Twitter Guy_) in the elevator. He snacks on the bagel and works through the Bernard Client Account for three hours until he hears this tune, something about ten million fireflies, on the radio and it gets stuck in his head. It goes around and around and he's still whistling it when he eats his lunchtime sandwiches and calls his wife.

For weeks afterwards, Marshall can't listen to that song without feeling a little sick, at odds with its happy, chirpy message.

Finally, out of nowhere, yet out of everywhere, it happens.

Richardson bursts into his room at about 2 p.m. and can barely get the words out. He stands there opening and closing his mouth like a fish out of water.

"What, dude?" Marshall says with a half-laugh, because he's expecting Richardson to tell him something awesome has happened in his tweets, or twits or whatever it is he's supposed to know about.

"It's Mr Stinson," Richardson says, like it's causing him physical pain to get the words out.

"What?" Marshall repeats, the smile frozen on his face.

"He's been shot."


	3. Chapter 3

It's funny how your brain suddenly doesn't know the way from A to B. How, in the moment after you hear that your friend's been shot, your mind decides to do a dump of unconnected thoughts, right into your frontal lobe.

But there are things that stand out; Memories and fragments, snatches of conversation.

_~ "I wasn't quick enough," Barney says, off-hand, like he gets strangled every day. Like it's a game. _

_~ At the hospital, his body is encased in white casts, shattered by the impact of a bus that almost ground him into the asphalt. _

_~ Barney's dead, he must be. Shot, like, with a real gun. Robin knows about guns, he should ask Robin. _

Marshall swallows, in slow motion, and the thoughts stream past like a waterfall, too fast to catch hold of. The secret he's held silent, that he's suspected, for a long time, it hits his skull with sledge-hammer force. Barney's job is too dangerous, in the sense of real, physical-dangerous. This it's not just bluster from a man who spends all his time thinking up new identities as a ruse to hit on women.

_~ No one normal is that good with makeup and wigs. The old man makeup alone was incredible._

Marshall suspects that Barney's whole life is one slippery lie after another. His whole life, maybe, except for the connection he's made to four random people in Manhattan, four random people he loves and who love him right back. If there were any guns here right now, any bullets, Marshall suspects that Barney would walk in front of them to protect his friends.

But to do that for Goliath National Bank? Why would anybody do that? Why would you risk your life for savings and loans?

This is what Marshall's been holding in, been unable to say.

_~ "Things I know about this company, I'll never be fired," Barney says, off-handed-ly. "I mean there's a pretty good chance one day I'll wash up on shore with no fingerprints or teeth."_

Looking back on it now, it's chilling. How often Barney joked about his job, how often they all ignored it. Then-

"He's alive," Richardson says.

The air whooshes out of Marshall's lungs.

*--*--*

Marshall gets this horrible pain in his ear and it takes him a few seconds to realise that it's because he's had his cell phone pinned tight in one position for the best part of two hours.

A barrage of questions had only mystified Richardson, who shrugged and simply checked his phone for updates. Every other attempt at getting information about Barney is met with a stone wall of nothing. Managers seem to be ensconced in meetings or unavailable, and nobody knows anything more than Marshall has already been told.

Barney has been shot. Barney is alive.

Most of the staff at GNB simply look at Marshall as though he should know everything already, if he's really Mr Stinson's close friend. The frustrating thing is that this isn't some conspiracy of silence; more like, it's just standard bureaucratic incompetence. Really, no one knows anything.

When Ted gets there, Marshall is aflame with impotent anger. Without Barney, he soon realises he has virtually no power or influence at the Bank. Nobody listens to him and nobody cares. In one, horribly selfish moment, there's a lurch in Marshall's stomach when he contemplates what this place would be like for him without Barney's protection. And if Barney dies, things will be a lot harder for him, maybe. For a few hours this possibility dogs Marshall, and makes him hate himself a little bit.

"I'm no good at this," he rages at Ted. "The corporate stuff was always- _is_ always Barney's thing." He's on the edge of blubbing.

"No!" Ted reaches out a hand. "No, Marshall. You're a crusader! You never let the bad guy win. That's all you, man!"

Marshall smiles and nods, and they slowly share out the task of calling up all the hospitals in Manhattan. They tell Lily to stay at school under strict instruction to let her know the moment they find their friend. They leave Robin to sleep. Her schedule's got her so stressed that neither of them can cope with the thought of her storming down here right now, guns a-blazing.

Maybe even literally guns a-blazing. As if that would help right now.

Neither of Marshall nor Ted voices the fear that right now their friend could be anywhere, even in a foreign country.

Right now, their friend could be dying.

*--*--*

Marshall gets the call at 6:16 p.m. First he notices that there's a missed call that must have come in while he was on the line with the latest hospital. He's just checking it when his phone goes off in his hand.

_Let's go to the mall _chirps out it's tinny tune.

"Barney!" Marshall gulps.

"Hey, Bro!" The familiar voice makes him go hot and cold at the same time. "You'll never guess what happened to me today? Go on, guess!"

"What?" Marshall responds automatically, despite everything.

Ted mimes putting the caller on speakerphone and Marshall complies.

"I got shot!" Barney's voice rings out, clear and true.

Their voices overlap - "Bro, are you okay?", "Dude! Where are you?"

He tells them.

*--*--*

"We tried to find you all day. You'd think it would be simple, finding a guy admitted to hospital with a gunshot wound in New York City."

Barney nods and laughs and nods and laughs. Marshall waves at his friend to lean on him but Barney shrugs it off, trying awkwardly to climb out of the wheelchair, one handed.

His left arm is in a sling. There's a large bandage across his upper arm and shoulder, visible under the t-shirt Ted's leant him.

The devil's in the detail, Marshall thinks. The spatter of blood stains, dark scarlet against the light grey material of Barney's suit paints.

"So what happened?" Ted asks, while Marshall surreptitiously tries to stop Barney from falling over before the cab pulls up by the curb outside the hospital. "I mean, should you even be released? Don't they want to keep you in, for observation?"

Neither Ted nor Marshall know what "for observation" means. It's just the sort of thing people tend to say in medical dramas on TV.

"Bros," Barney says, waving his arms around and almost toppling head-first into the cab. "Broskis! They shot me up with some rad drugs, and left me staring into space all on my lonesome. There's no way in Hades I was staying in that place. It's too-" He shakes his head, brows drawing together in a tight frown.

Marshall and Ted flank Barney, one on each side, as they slide into the back seat of the yellow cab.

"What happened?" Ted repeats.

"Drive by shooting, brah!" Barney slurs. "Winged me, the jerk." When he sees Ted and Marshall's expressions he laughs. "Don't worry, it's just a flesh wound, went right through. Couple 'o stitches and I was fine." He giggles a bit and Ted shoots Marshall a pointed look as their friend leans forward to bang the flat of his hand against the partition. "Driver!" He yells imperiously. "Take us to MacLaren's Pub! I need beer!"

"Dude, I really don't think you should be drinking when you're all hopped up on meds," Marshall protests.

"Beer!" Barney insists.

Marshall lets it go for now and the cab speeds through the late evening traffic. But there's a large part of Marshall's brain that doesn't believe a word of Barney's explanation. There's a part of him that's expecting gun fire any moment, expecting an explosion of glass as a sniper's bullet rips through the window to finish off their friend. And there's a deep pain that runs from his belly and up into his chest, burning with peptic acid and fear, that tells him he needs to find out what in the hell is going on. And fast.

This feels like a final warning, but Marshall has no idea from where. Or from whom.


	4. Chapter 4

Part 4

"You idiot!"

Lily thwacks Barney across the back of the head with a rolled-up MacLaren's menu before sliding into the booth beside Marshall. "What in the hell, Barney?" She rounds on him, mascara smeared across her cheeks. Marshall drapes his arm around her but she shrugs it off as she realizes the mess Barney's in, seeing his shoulder, the bandages. She blanches, covering her mouth with one trembling hand. "Oh my god, how can you be laughing?"

Marshall takes her other hand and squeezes it, while across the table Barney shrugs and sips his drink. It's a diet coke. Neither Ted nor Marshall will let him near any alcohol in his condition.

Barney grins in a kind of distracted, dazed manner and says "I'm totally awesome, Lil. Bullets bounce right off me."

"Right through you!" Ted corrects him, scowling.

But Marshall notices the details. Like how it's not just the medication or the shock or whatever. No, there's something more about Barney, like a puppet whose strings have been cut. Whatever tension's been keeping him up all night recently seems to have been leeched out of him. Or shot out of him.

Barney's been walking around like the worst thing in the world has been about to happen. It occurs to Marshall that perhaps now it already has, and so he thinks he can relax. It amazes him that Ted and Lily don't call Barney out about this. The whole thing stinks. Barney even confirms Marshall's suspicion when he says "Sure, I'll be invalided out. A few weeks in bed, and I'm not saying by myself, if you know what I mean, Marshall?"

Marshall returns his fist-bump good naturedly, but he can't help thinking that Barney had just got away with murder. Or away from his own murder.

When Robin arrives, she pulls Ted out of the booth and sinks down next to Barney, prodding and poking at him, as if she's still not sure that he's actually alive. "It's true then?" She says. "Does it hurt?" Her hands linger on the space between the bandage and the sling, on his bare arm.

Barney lowers his voice and murmurs. "You know it, babe."

Robin thumps him in the chest.

Rubbing it, Barney grumbles that he's got a mind to fly to Rio and live on Pina Coladas for a few weeks, if it gets him away from violent Canadians.

Lily just smiles and asks Robin if she's "inappropriately turned on right now."

Horrified, Robin sits back in the booth. "Lily, he was _shot_!" But she spoils it all with a giggle.

"I'm gonna drink rum from the navels of nubile chicks!" Barney continues, oblivious.

But there are details, oh so many details, that bother Marshall. Like why the hospital didn't call Barney's emergency contact when he was brought in, and why was Barney even allowed home. There was so much wrong with this picture.

"Dude, do you wanna stay with us tonight?" Ted asks Barney, gesturing upwards. It pulls Marshall out of his reverie. There's something lingering; that same instinct that he felt in the back of the cab. Like just being near Barney is putting them all in danger right now.

It isn't right. It isn't right at all.

Then Barney gets a call on his cell phone.

He takes it, snapping "Stinson" down the line and waiting while, presumably, someone on the other end of the line said their piece.

There's a gap, a moment, maybe even a millisecond when Barney's fingers go slack and he almost drops the phone. Everyone else is talking and Marshall's pretty sure he's the only one who sees it.

Nobody else notices the sheer terror that claims his friend in that moment, before he tries to crawl back behind his mask. Trouble is, Barney's mask is wearing thin.

Suddenly, Marshall really doesn't want Barney staying with Robin and Ted. He doesn't want the guy anywhere near any of them.

It's like someone's painted a target on his friend's forehead in thick black marker. It's like it's open season. And Marshall knows that it's now way past time for him to act.

*--*--*

Marshall almost confesses everything to Lily that night, while he's struggling to formulate a plan to help Barney. Then Lily's leg curls around his and she pulls herself on top of him, slow and lithe.

As Lily's sweet lips descend on his, all he wants to do is confide in another soul. It's killing him to keep this all in.

But it might kill just her to let it all out.

*--*--*

_Two weeks later_

Things deteriorate badly. Even at Marshall's level, it's possible to pick up office gossip if you keep your ear to the ground, and there's no doubt that the hot topic, the thing the higher-ups _really_ want to be kept quiet, is the decline of Barney Stinson.

There's talk of meetings missed and mistakes made. There are complaints from his PA about paperwork going astray and angry midnight telephone calls.

And then, on Friday, the inevitable happens.

Marshall hears it all second-hand from Ted, how Barney's lost his job. The way Barney told Ted, the altercation in the ETA went beyond legendary, past epic, and through to utterly fucked-up. It basically consisted of Barney sucker punching Billson and threatening to gut his family and hang them out to dry on the Queensboro' Bridge.

Apparently the whole thing's been caught on videotape and Marshall wonders vaguely if the company will even consider prosecuting Barney.

He very much hopes that they don't think his friend is worthy of expending any more energy on. Deep down Marshall hides the swell of triumph he feels.

No one suspects a thing. Least of all, Barney.

*--*--*

And still, Marshall never says a word to Lily. Never tells her about how he's kept Barney doped to the eyeballs these last couple of weeks, by slipping his hospital meds into his Red Bull.  
How he's tampered with Barney's email, contacts and calendar so it looks as though Barney has become an itinerant screw up.

How he's falsified documentation, switched papers.

How he's systematically sabotaged and destroyed his friend's career in order to save his life.

Nope, Marshall never says a word. He smiles, he makes small talk. But somehow it still eats him up inside.

*--*--*

Barney and Robin get back together.

It happens in a weird, roundabout way that none of them really understand, least of all Robin and Barney themselves.

It happens because, for the first time in many years, Barney actually needs someone. And for the first time in an equally high number of years, Robin feels needed. Barney needs Robin to help him rebuild, because she's so uncompromising. Robin uses the brute force approach in order to take control, and for the first time since they've know Barney, he lets someone else lead him.

There are no rings, or wedding bells, or blue orchestras. There are no flowers or chocolates. But Barney's arm is always draped across Robin's shoulders, and Robin's smile is soft and warm. They all know what's going on.

It's never said out loud, but they all know.

*--*--*

_Evening_

Marshall sits and stares at Mr Inch, Director of Special Projects. He sits and stares and ignores the ache in his head, in his heart, because he has to _think_.

"I'd like to offer you a job," Inch had said.

"But I've got a job," was Marshall's first thought, but then he realized what Inch meant. He was being offered Barney's job.

"This isn't the kind of job you apply for," Inch tells him. It's the kind of job you win. _Dead men's shoes._

The ETA is brightly lit, there are no windows. It's disorienting and bleak, containing only one table and two chairs. Marshall honestly had no idea that the room was used to transition employees up the hierarchy of the organisation as well as out of it.

His heart beats harder, thump-thumping, as he considers how to phrase his rejection of this offer. It speeds up even more as he realizes that it's not the kind of job you can reject.

Inch slides a folder across the table towards Marshall, and he expects it to contain and offer, a contract, the details of the payoff he'll be getting in order to sell his soul. In a way, it does.

There are medical records inside, tests. His wife's name is on the docket, and although there's plenty of jargon, there are many words he understands.

Barren.

Unable to bear children.

Unable to carry a baby to term.

Unable to ever have the family they both wanted.

Marshall's mouth goes dry when he realizes what this means.

"We can help you," Mr Inch says, showing his teeth. He looks more shark than human being. "We have the finest doctors. Marshall," the man says smoothly. "We've watched your career with interest. You're smart, you're ruthless and you're incredibly discrete. We can use you and you sure can use us."

Marshall slowly closes the folder and a thought occurs to him.

The devil is in the detail.

Marshall remembers a certain videotape, a certain young, optimistic young guy with a fringe of long blonde hair and penchant for sad ballads played on an electric keyboard.

"What did you offer Barney?" Marshall asks. "All those years ago? When Barney joined Special Projects, how did you offer to help him?"

Inch looks weirdly pleased by the question, while Marshall just remembers the fear in Barney's eyes when he got that call at the bar, just after he was shot. He also remembers the bruises around Barney's throat.

Inch nods his head and taps his fingers on the folder, as though waiting patiently for Marshall to figure it all out for himself.

Marshall remembers that Barney's Mom had cancer once. Barney was so sure she was going to die that he hired an actress to fool her into thinking he had a girlfriend.

The words get stuck in Marshall's throat, even as he utters them, daring Inch to deny his suspicions. "Barney's Mom. You cured her?"

The clock on the wall ticks in the silence.

_"We have the finest doctors." _

Inch holds Marshall's gaze, then reaches into his suit jacket and pulls out a folded sheet of paper, handing it to Marshall, followed by a pen.

"Sign here," Inch says. Two words, like gunfire.

Marshall squeezes his eyes shut, steels himself, and signs. What choice does he have?


End file.
